The following incident was narrated by one of our professors of Business Ethics at IIM Shillong and I couldn’t help but sharing it..
Everyone must have heard of the story of the shepherd boy and the wolf. The moral of the story was straight forward “A liar's truth is seldom believed”. Ever wondered of any other moral that could be derived from that story? Before you proceed to read on, just think for a moment and try to come up with an alternative moral. Don’t worry if you are not able to come up with anything else, that is what happens to most of us who have a restricted frame of mind. If you are able to come up with something sensible then I must admit you have an excellent ability to unlearn things.
Pause for 5 min and try to think of an alternative moral for the story…..
There are two separate incidents which I will share, both involving kids. Both of which will show you a glimpse of the innocent intelligence of children. The first incident took place in Kolkata, where a father narrated this story to his son and asked for the moral of the story in the end. He was amazed on listening to his son’s reply. His son said, “Dad, what kind of story is this. There is problem in the first line of the story itself. How can a shepherd boy go to work, this is child labour and it is illegal. I do not accept it.” A child talking about child labour, touching indeed!
The second incident happened in Punjab, where a school teacher narrated this story in class and asked the students to give the moral of the story. There was one kid who stood up and said, “Ma’am, this tells us that when we lie everything good happens with us but when we say the truth we get hurt”. The teacher was amazed at the child’s thought process.
I myself was amazed by both the replies. Even at this stage when I think of the story, the only moral that comes to me is the traditional one. I guess that it has been in grilled in us for so long that it now becomes too difficult to part ways with it. This happens not just with stories but with many other learnings which we have encountered in our life. Our professors at IIM Shillong keep telling us that the best way to learn something new is to unlearn your previous learning. After listening to these two stories I couldn’t agree more!
3 comments:
I can narrate a similar incident from my days at Teach India.
I told them about the story where there were two patients in a hospital - one near the window, the other away. The person near the window told stories of scenes outside the window to the person who was not near the window. This made the person away from the window jealous.
One night the person near the window had an heart attack. The other person realized it but did not press the emergency bell. Next day they found him dead. The person who was not near the window then requested to shift him to the cot near the window. When that was done and he opened the window he saw there was nothing but a wall - the other person had made those stories up to cheer him up.
At the end I asked,"So the moral of the story is...." A long silence was followed by "Never lie. If you lie, you will die." :-)
:) good one.. A child's innocence!
Hmm.. After reading the 3 derived morals (2 from the shepherd story and 1 from the window story), what I will take as a learning is,
sometimes we should not make a deliberate attempt to read between the lines, delve too deep into the story, to relate it to other stories or experiences...
To start with, we should just enjoy the story in isolation and then speak out the first thing that comes to our mind..
Nice Lesson :) Keep writing:)
Regards
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